Where Have All the Choirs Gone?

Debates over "appropriate" styles of music
used in worship settings demonstrate how important this
aspect of liturgics is to the believer. Music challenges and
provokes, as well as satisfies and comforts. Increasingly,
cultural pressures about the "uses" of music are
entering the life of the churcha blessing to some and a
bane to others.

Related Reading

This article offers examples of the church's choices as it seeks to
deepen its mission as an advocate of the beauty of God's
created order and humankind's creativity. 
The Editors

"Try to imagine how
your priest might react," wrote Keith Shafer in The
Living Church, "if a group of parishioners said, 'We
think your sermons are too intellectual. We know you have a
seminary education, but we've been watching the television
evangelists, and frankly, they involve us emotionally. So
we'd like you to begin preaching in a more folksy style.
We're confident that you'll see how popular this sort of
thing is, and that it will increase attendance at services.
And please don't be inflexible...if you don't go along with
us, we'll find someone who will.'"

Shafer, a church musician, was responding to the pressure
under which many music ministers find themselves to
accommodate what they see as an ill-considered demand for
third-rate church music. And there is a strong case to be
made that banal and frivolous music bespeaks a banal and
frivolous theology. What does our sacred music say about the
Most High? Does it say with Thomas, "My Lord and my
God," or rather, as Thomas Day put it in Why
Catholics Can't Sing, "Have a nice day,
God!"?

Yet Shafer's call for a "Just Say No to Renewal
Music" movement is specious. Style is, of itself,
neutral. (There is a variety of service, but the same Lord.)
What counts is a commitment to excellence within whatever
stylistic, demographic, financial, or other parameters we
find ourselves. But in a desperate bid to increase flagging
attendance and bolster Laodicean spirits, many churches have
become so afraid of throwing out the baby of
"relevance" that they retain the bathwater of inane
music.

Michael Dennis Browne, librettist for Stephen Paulus'
church opera The Three Hermits, describes text as a
boat, and music as the water buoying it up. His metaphor
echoes Martin Luther's description of scripture as the
rough manger in which God is laid. Whether as simple as a
boat or manger, or as complex as an opera or psalm, the forms
we use to glorify God proclaim what we believe about God.
What follows are profiles of some organizations that take
seriously the commitment to offer a worthy sacrifice of
musical praise.

Hungry for Solid FoodTo the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I
have become all things to all people, that I might by all
means save some.  1 Corinthians 9:22

You'll never see a sign outside a church offering
"pop" services as an alternative to
"traditional" ones. We won't say "pop
service" because we want, if not an odor of sanctity, at
least an air of legitimacy. But I worry that using
"contemporary" as a euphemistic code word for
"pop" has the effect ofperhaps even the
intention ofsilencing and marginalizing serious music.
Yet it is that seriousness which confers legitimacy; if it
didn't, we would call pop services by their name.

Not content simply to use music in a pop style, Grace
Fellowship in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, employs all the
trappings of popular entertainment, including synthesizers,
light and sound crews, stagehands, and video. Rather than
offer an alternative to the prevailing culture, they seem
determined to beat MTV at its own game. And though they
continue to call what they do "contemporary," their
pop services seem to be paying off; attendance has increased
300 percent since music director Chris Atkins arrived in
1994.

Atkins' first cleansing act was to replace the
"Holy Karaoke"prerecorded song
accompanimentsin use when he arrived with actual
musicians. So serious is his commitment to strong music that
these "worship leaders" must sign letters of
agreement with the church. Without dependable music in a
polished pop style, Atkins couldn't depend on the
congregation either.

"In the Brooklyn Park/Champlin area," he
explains, "many of the people come from unchurched
backgrounds, or from hurting experiences in churches, where
there's alienation, and have identified some of the
icons of those bad experiences." Those charged images
include some very taken-for-granted things.

"We do not have an organ at our church," Atkins
says, as the mere sight of the pipes "would be an icon
that would not fit the community we are serving. It would
evoke images for them of a church that seemed
inaccessiblethat they felt they could not enter
into." As Paul vowed to turn vegetarian if the
possibility that the meat had been sacrificed to idols might
wound the conscience of his weaker brethren, so has Atkins
embraced the pop idiom in deference to his wounded
constituency.

But couldn't such rapid growth be compared to the
seeds that fell on shallow soil? Aren't "worship
leaders" actually a Sunday morning version of Saturday
night's rock stars?

In answer, Atkins compares Grace to another large
evangelical congregation, Wooddale Church, in Eden Prairie,
Minnesota. "What you need to understand about Grace
Fellowship is that we are in a predominantly blue-collar
community. Wooddale is in a highly professional, more
culturally literate community," Atkins opines. This is
why, he believes, Wooddale is able to have a choir at all
services, while Grace cannot field a choir at all. In
addition, Wooddale culls players for its orchestra from its
own music school. Their services include everything from
newly composed art music to classic repertoire, traditional
hymns, and praise songs.

While he acknowledges Eden Prairie's white-collar
demographic, music director David Bullock hesitates to
ascribe the success of his program to it. "My premise is
that people respond to quality regardless of style," he
says, pointing out that the evangelical community is
"beginning to open up to discussing content instead of
style" and focusing on spiritually enriching worship
over against a "formula for getting people in the
door."

Another goal for Bullock is to undo the damage done by
well-meaning choir directors whose musical ambitions surpass
their choirs' abilities. "When we do something
classically oriented, we do it well, so people say, Oh,
that was good!', as opposed to when a little 18-voice
choir with no tenors" tries to tackle subtle or complex
music.

Disharmonies Over Music MinistryYou know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over
them, and their great ones are tyrants.... Do not lord it over
those in your charge, but be examples to the flock.  Matthew 20:25; 1 Peter 5:3

"When I come into a situation like this, I don't
try to find out what went on. I try to offer a healing
presence." The more one digs into the recent past of one
of the country's most renowned church music programs,
the more fitting rector William Warner's approach shows
itself to be. Like the elephant described by blind men
variously as a rope, a snake, and a tree, the
near-dismantling of Emmanuel Music by Massachusetts'
Episcopal Diocese is variously accounted for by the parties
involved; and Warner's experience ministering to
parishes in "organizational chaos" has stood him in
good stead.

Today, the church runs a children's choir, composed
of parish and inner-city kids, which periodically leads
worship and gives concerts around the city. Like all of
Emmanuel's music programs, this is a project of Emmanuel
Music (EM), which, though it was separately incorporated for
tax purposes in 1979, has remained integral to the church.

Though the parish does invest in EM's programs, it
reaps a return from frequent benefit concerts, according to
Pulitzer laureate composer John Harbison, a long-time
parishioner and musical consultant. This money helps the
church maintainin partnership with city and state
governmenta Safe Haven Center for homeless
schizophrenic women, while EM concert revenues directly
support an AIDS Respite Team ministry.

But EM has always been foremost the music ministry to the
parishwhich was at the heart of Emmanuel's
troubles.

When the Rev. Michael Kuhn became rector in 1990, he
inherited a parish with a 20-year tradition of Bach cantata
performances during the services. These works, which Bach
composed for liturgical use, are "very oddly shaped for
concert performance," according to EM's director
Craig Smith. Based on hymn tunes, and usually beginning with
a large, complex fugue for choir and orchestra, they end with
a simple chorale setting of the hymnunusual for concert
works, which more often increase in complexity as they
unfold.

Yet in the context of the Eucharist such an arrangement
can be very moving, as the chorale tune, hinted at throughout
the work, coalesces into a broad, sweeping, familiar
statement at the endespecially as the cantata texts
reflect the day's scripture readings and tie the service
together. For this reason, and by dint of tradition and
inertia, EM was committed to keeping them in the services.
Lectures and chamber music, the Jazz Coalition, and larger
works like passion settings EM relegated to concerts, both in
the church and at the New England Conservatory. But the
cantatas were part of parish worship.

But Kuhn, according to Harbison, "was not sympathetic
to the very prominent role the arts were playing in the
church." And when Kuhn began holding Mass for a small
group on Sunday evenings, the perceived threat to the
centrality of the music program became a lightning rod.

"There were people who came to me and said, I
would love to come to Emmanuel, but to sit through a whole
cantata, that's not where we are,'" Kuhn says.
"And to the music leadership in the parish, [the evening
service] was threateningas if that was going to
distract from music." A standoff ensued, between Kuhn
and a small band of supporters, and a large majority of the
parish, whose unusual mix of musicians and artists had built
a uniquely suited environment for their spiritual community.

But the Episcopal Church, unlike the Congregational Church
from which many New England Episcopalians come, is not
democratic. The Greek word episkopos means
"bishop," and the Episcopal Church is governed
accordingly by a hierarchy, with the rector of a parish as
its chief liturgical officer. There is an elected vestry, but
Kuhn and the late Bishop David Johnson questioned the
appropriateness of paid musicians, many of them
non-Episcopalians, serving on it. When tensions came to a
head, the vestry filed for a Dissolution of the Pastoral
Relationship under Canon 21 of the National Convention. (For
undetermined reasons Canon 20, which provides for the
reconciliation of such tensions, was bypassed.)

Four years later, EMin whose support such musical
luminaries as Seiji Ozawa, Kurt Masur, Christopher Hogwood,
Andre Previn, and Peter Sellars appealed to the late
bishopis stronger than ever. On a total budget smaller
than the rector's salary, they have expanded their
concert schedule, produced a number of lauded recordings, and
commissioned new worksincluding a Hebrew choral piece,
in conjunction with a Boston synagogue, commemorating the
50th anniversary of the state of Israel. The atmosphere Smith
described as "very lively and non-routine" has been
restored, and the parish has a rector supportive of their
celebrated and unique cantata program.

"The choir and orchestra members are an integral part
of the community," Rev. Warner says. "They pledge,
their children are active in the Sunday school program, they
offer leadership on commissions, and it's wonderful. Is
it a church for musicians? It certainly is. But it's a
community of many different people from a variety of
backgrounds, and we're just glad that we can be a home
that is particularly attractive and meaningful to
artists."

"The Bach cantata in the context of the Eucharist
adds a great deal," he continues, "and the gestalt
of the Eucharist with that quality of musicalong with a
great liturgy and a history of strong preachingcreates
a lot of spiritual energy. And what Emmanuel needed to do,
and what we're doing, is to create avenues into the
world for that energy."

"Sharing God" in a Sacred SpaceLet the word of Christ dwell in you richly...and with
gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual
songs to God. Colossians 3:16

What should congregations do that find themselves in
conflict over worship style?

As novelist Alice Walker pointed out, we do not come to
church to find God, but to share God. This is why traditional
church music is simple, sturdy, and suitable for
congregational singingand of a relatively objective
character. The goal has been what Bullock describes as
"vertical worship," in which the faithful talk not
about God, but to God, with a unified voice. According to
Warner, "If you try to divide the church into those who
are a part of the music and those who aren't, you miss
the dynamic completelyit's a straw man. The
community is of one nature, and you can't divide it that
way."

Yet unlike the early church, in which proselytes were
confirmed in the faith before ever participating in corporate
worship, modern churches find that services must be worship
and evangelism at once. Some, like Wooddale, respond with
"blended" worship, offering something for
everybodybut the level of musical ability must be
exceptional in order to carry this off, since much renewal
music is more performance-oriented than participatory.

Many churches now offer praise music in weeknight
"Prayer and Praise" services. This is actually an
old stratagem, traditionally employed in such settings as the
revival meeting. Even in Islam, which permits no liturgical
music but Koranic cantillation, the Sufi orders offer public
gatherings in which devotional poetry is sung to popular
songtunes, and the Hasidic Jews also have a repertory of
non-liturgical devotional songs.

One disturbing term in the rhetoric of renewal musicians
is "Spirit-filled," which, like
"Bible-believing," is a rubric designed to silence
opposition by implying a divine mandate. If we need no other
discouragement to such divisive language, we have Jesus'
warning against the eternal sin of blaspheming the Spirit.

Any features of Christian worship, including music, must,
as Rev. Kuhn points out, have a strong faith base, rather
than being themselves objects of faith. If any of our worship
aids become central to our faith life, eclipsing the central
social mission of Christian discipleship, we tempt the
judgment of Amos: "Away with the noise of your songs! I
will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice
roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing
stream."

Finally, we must remember that our struggles over style
are a part of the culture wars. Before the throne of the
Infinite, there is infinitely little difference between our
highest art and our lowest, and all our good works are as
filthy rags. The question is not how high our brows are, but
how prophetic our voices.

The way we worship is finally about what we are saying of
God in the images we hold up. Moses held up a golden serpent
in the wildernesscertainly not an easy or congenial
image, especially during a plague of serpents. Yet it was a
salutary image for the snakebit children of Israel to
contemplate, and all who would raise their eyes were healed.

Is the serpent we hold up a lovingly handwrought work of
art, or a commercialized reject from Jurassic Park? Though
God may choose what is foolish in this world to shame the
wise, our sacred art ought not to be dragged down to the
lowest common denominator in pursuit of some chimerical
democracy.

Scott Robinson was a composer and free-lance journalist in
Minneapolis when this article appeared.

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